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House approves aviation bill despite Obama veto threat

WASHINGTON (AP) - A sweeping aviation bill that could thwart
proposed new safety regulations, including one that would prevent
tired pilots from flying, passed the House Friday.

The $59.7 billion Republican-drafted bill is a blueprint for
Federal Aviation Administration programs for the next three and a
half years. It cuts the agency's budget by $4 billion, money GOP
lawmakers said the agency can do without. Democrats said the cuts
would endanger air safety.

The bill also eliminates subsidies for air service to rural
communities with the exception of airports in Alaska. The Senate
bill would disqualify some airports, but retains most of the
program.

The bill would also eliminate most of the $200 million essential air
service program, which pays airlines to provide scheduled service
to 155 communities. It would phase out the program in the lower 48
states by 2013. After that, only subsidies for service to airports
in Alaska -- currently about $12.5 million a year -- would be
continued.

The program was created to ensure that less-profitable routes to
small airports wouldn't be eliminated when airline service was
deregulated in 1978. But critics say the airports often serve too
few people to merit the subsidies.

Subsidies per airline passenger range as high as $5,223 in Ely,
Nev., to as low as $9.21 in Thief River Falls, Minn., according to
Transportation Department data for the lower 48 states as of June.

The bill passed on a 223 to 196 mostly party line vote. It would
require the FAA to tailor regulations to different segments of the
aviation industry rather than set across-the-board safety
standards. It also would prohibit new safety regulations if the
agency can't justify the costs to the industry.

Lawmakers also clashed over a labor provision in the bill that
would make it more difficult for airline and railroad workers to
unionize. The provision would overturn a National Mediation Board
rule approved last year that allows employees in those industries
to form a union by a simple majority of those voting. Under the old
rule, workers who didn't vote were treated as "no" votes.

Republicans complain that the new rule reverses 75 years of
precedent to favor labor unions. Democrats and union officials say
the change puts airline and railroad elections under the same
democratic rules required for unionizing all other companies.

Sixteen Republicans joined Democrats in an unsuccessful attempt
to take the labor provision out the bill.
The White House warned in a statement Wednesday that President
Barack Obama may veto the bill if the funding levels and the labor
provision are retained. The Senate has passed a version of the bill
that doesn't include the labor provision. Differences between the
two remain to be negotiated.

Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., author of the provision on safety
regulations, said it would only apply to future FAA regulations and
wouldn't affect regulations the agency is already working on.
"I believe we are going to strengthen the rulemaking process
and make the skies and aviation travel even safer than it is
today," Shuster said.

But Rep. Jerry Costello, D-Ill., a former aviation subcommittee
chairman, said the amendment is broadly written applying to all FAA
regulations, both current and future, and would make the agency's
already cumbersome rulemaking process even more difficult.

The sensitivity of the issue was underscored by the narrowness
of the 215 to 209 vote to add Shuster's provision to the bill.

FAA is at work on eight separate sets of new regulations
required under a landmark aviation safety law enacted by Congress
last year, including regulations that would adjust how many hours
pilots can be required to work and how much rest time they must be
given between flights.

Among those campaigning against Shuster's provision were the
families of victims of a regional airline crash near Buffalo, N.Y.,
two years ago and Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, the airline
captain whose piloting skills were lauded after he ditched his
plane into the Hudson River following a collision with a flock of
geese. Sullenberger predicted in an interview with The Associated
Press earlier this week that if enacted, the provision would cost
lives.

The National Transportation Safety Board has been pushing for
the new pilot fatigue regulations based on modern sleep research
for two decades. But a broad swath of the aviation industry,
including passenger airlines, oppose FAA's proposal for updating
work schedule regulations as too costly. FAA estimates the proposal
would cost airlines $1.3 billion over the next 10 years, but
airlines say it will actually cost many times that amount.

The regulations could be especially expensive for cargo
airlines, which do much of their flying over night. Nonscheduled
airlines, which transport 95 percent of U.S. troops and 40 percent
of military cargo around the world, have said the proposed
regulation would make it more difficult for them to complete
flights.

The bill also contains a provision that would effectively block
a regulation proposed by the Transportation Department aimed at
preventing fires caused by air shipments of lithium batteries like
those used in cameras, cell phones, laptops and countless other
products. The batteries can short-circuit in flight and catch fire.

The proposed regulation has been the focus of an intense
lobbying battle pitting pilots who warn that lives are at risk
against U.S. industry and foreign governments, which say the
regulation would increase costs of countless consumer products.

The amendment would require the department to adopt
international shipping standards that are weaker than the
department's proposed regulation.

"Regulations that are not harmonized with international safety
standards will disrupt the free flow of commerce and threaten
jobs," said Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., chief sponsor of the bill.

The funding reductions come at a time when the agency had
anticipated a larger, not smaller, budget. FAA is in the midst of a
program to switch to a new air traffic system based on GPS
technology instead of World War II-era radar technology. The
program is expected to cost the government as much as $20 billion
over the next decade and industry as much as $22 billion. Much of
the rest of the world is either using satellite-based air
navigation and air traffic control or planning to upgrade to GPS
technology.